A father who admitted locking his daughter in a dark room as punishment has been found guilty of using a shoe to beat her when she failed to have a shower.
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But the man, who cannot be named, was acquitted by special magistrate Graeme Lunney of a more serious assault charge on Friday.
The man went on trial in the ACT Magistrates Court last year on two counts of common assault and one of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
The lesser assault charges relate to an incident in June 2012 when the father told the teenager to shower after a sports match and then to start her homework.
He and his wife then went grocery shopping, returning an hour later to discover the girl had not done as directed.
The father felt his daughter's excuses were lies and decided to administer corporal punishment in accordance with house rules.
He told her to kneel, a disciplinary method used in the culture of the nation in which he was raised, and then struck her on the bottom and leg about three times.
She then told him to stop, stood up and grabbed his right arm, which had been subject to a recent operation and any pressure on the area could cause potentially fatal bleeding.
He responded by slapping her and then beating her with a shoe.
The actual bodily harm charge related to an injury prosecutors say was sustained while the girl was being disciplined in 2009.
That incident resulted in her head hitting a timber floor, the subsequent head wound requiring hospital treatment, they said.
The magistrate dismissed the more serious charge as he said he could not be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt it had occurred.
But Mr Lunney found the father guilty of the two other assaults.
Australian parents can legally discipline their children by corporal punishment as long as it is reasonable and can argue ''lawful chastisement'' if charged with assault.
But Mr Lunney said the man's actions had not been moderate or reasonable. ''The punishment was disproportionately severe,'' Mr Lunney said.
During the hearing last August, the father told the court he had tried locking his daughter in a "dark room" in an attempt to use other, non-physical forms of punishment.
The man's legal team argued he acted in self-defence when he removed his shoe to hit the girl as she grabbed his arm.
But Mr Lunney found the father had been angry, not fearful.
''He had in fact, in my view, not finished his set piece of discipline,'' he said.
''She was not aggressive. She had seized his right arm in order to avert further punishment."
The man will now be sentenced on the two counts of common assault.
The matter will reappear before the court this month.
